We would never talk directly about death. Even as Aga's 172 cm frame began rapidly to shrink to 43 kilograms, we lived with a kind of wordless understanding that it was better not to understand. We danced
around the subject, talking instead about Gott's latest songs or the book Aga was reading or my friends and teachers at college. Then one day ambulance took her to hospital. My Tato who learned to ask, "Haveyou seen my glasses, or shirt, or shoes?" had stopped asking for help.
That week Mamka left the house to go shopping without a list. Mamka was
nothing without her lists.
No one accepted that Aga was confronting the end of her life. It washard to believe that such a thought could have even entered anyone's mind. It was denied by all in the beginning. No one ever expects that they might some day find themselves with a dying twenty-two-years-old sister, daughter, schoolfriend, fiance in front of their eyes.
Aga, tall and radiant, had turned heads and broken more than a few hearts. Within weeks of the diagnosis, Aga's rosy cheeks were gone. She looked five years older in her hospital bed, ashen-coloured. She
endured spells of increased bloating, most noticeable were her puffy feet and legs, as well as her shallow breathing. In the stark white room, she felt constantly nauseous.
When I sat beside Aga's bed at hospital, watching her life slip away, my thoughts ran back to our childhood when Aga was the strongest rock in my life. There she lay, an unrecognisable girl, unable to communicate, her eyes seemed withdrawn and had an air of someone who had learned too much of life to indulge in smiles, but with a heart still full of sister's love. In that split second between my lips
whispering the "Hail Mary" and "Our Father," an eternity went by in which my mind was falling over in pity, panic, and most of all some unexplained fear.
Everytime I said goodbye to Aga I felt taller and tanner than the last time, and when she held me, I felt awkward, older, as if I was her older brother and she was my younger sister.
At home, torrent of tears came without warning. Once our wholesome
kitchen echoed with the laughter of family sharing funny stories. From that time on our meal times proceeded in silence. No genuine laughter would be heard for a long time to come.